One of the more unique aspects of being a Millennial Mainframer is working on teams with coworkers far older than ourselves. While this generational gap impacts day-to-day life in a mainframe shop in meaningful and significant ways, our older coworkers, contrary to popular belief, were at one time themselves young IT professionals learning the mainframe platform. I was reminded of this fact during IBM’s Pulse Conference when one of the speakers saw a group of Millennial Mainframers sitting together and commented that he felt “like he was back at an IT shop in the 1970s.” In that light, it is quite useful for us to consider our elders’ experiences as young mainframers and perspective regarding the evolution of the mainframe platform. Of course, many of the Baby Boomers grew up with the maxim “never trust anyone over 30,” meaning that we need to need to take their thoughts and advice with a healthy dose of youthful skepticism.

In 1964 (the very same year that Jack Weinberger penned the aforementioned Boomer maxim in the San Francisco Chronicle), a Italian-American college student studying Electrical Engineering in New York state began to get nagged by his mother. While this student dreamed about moving west (out californee way), his mother wanted him to think about something more practical, like an IBM co-op program in the Hudson Valley. After much gnashing of teeth, this student relented, which gave him the opportunity to work on the ferrite cores of the System 360 (the original predecessor to the System z mainframe). Rather than experience the Haight or the counter-culture of the 1960s, this “magna summa cum nada” student (named Nick Donofrio) began a 44 year IBM career that brought him into “the primordial ooze” of mainframe computing.

In the following 40 minute talk to younger IBMers during the announcement of the zEnterprise, Nick Donofrio recounts his views of the past, present, and future of mainframe computing. Despite having a length longer than the 30 second attention span of the average Millennial, this speech is worth a listen, as it is the best message I have ever heard for communicating the unique value of mainframe computing. So fasten your seatbelts and hit play. Heck, as a millennial, you’re a master multi-tasker anyways, so feel free to fire up DrawSomething on your favorite iOS or Android Device while devoting your ears to Nick Donofrio.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel blessed? Did Nick inspire you? Do you want five honorary doctorate degrees? Do you agree with his thoughts on the mainframe? How do you plan to build on the mainframe’s legacy? Let’s hear you in the comments!

Even more interesting, it is possible that a private cloud on zEnterprise could follow the steps of Eucalyptus (a public cloud solution) and run an API that matched the syntax of an API stack such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or IBM’s SmartCloud. Such a move would allow the instant portability of ubiquitous cloud-based front ends to a private mainframe clouds, potentially following in the footsteps of industry standard technologies (such as TCP/IP, UNIX, Linux, Java) to further open up and promote the mainframe as the centralized “system of systems” of a complex heterogeneous IT environment. In the web development world, developers have benefited for quite some time from Google and Amazon’s simple yet powerful APIs. I can’t help but wonder how similar tools could affect the deployment and utilization of the zEnterprise environment in the future.

I challenge you, dear readers, to consider how one could build and deploy an mainframe API that would provide the strengths of flexibility, inter-connectivity, and ease of use without compromising traditional strengths in security and efficiency. Have you worked with APIs in the past? Do you think that there is a role for such tools on the mainframe? What sort of impact would the use of such tools have on the mainframe? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.